Kirsten Dunst biography

Born in Point Pleasant, New Jersey, Kirsten Dunst had an agent at the age of three. She secured her first film role at the age of five as Woody Allen and Mia Farrow's daughter in 1989's New York Stories; she then played Tom Hanks' kid in 1990's The Bonfire of the Vanities. Her big break came in 1993 when she beat out 5,000 other young actresses to get the role of Claudia, the child blood-sucker in Interview With the Vampire. It was a big leap that earned her much recognition: she was nominated for a Golden Globe award for Best Supporting Actress, up against Sophia Loren, Uma Thurman, Dianne Wiest and Robin Wright.

The combination of the film's success and that of the same year's Little Women (in which she played the frivolous Amy) made Kirsten one of the most bankable child actors in Hollywood. The following year she starred in the Robin Williams action-fantasy Jumanji and then lent her voice to the animated feature Anastasia (1997). The same year, she had a small but memorable role in Barry Levinson's highly praised Wag The Dog, and subsequently starred in the children's action flick Small Soldiers (1998). The year 1999 marked a turning point in Kirsten's career, as she began appearing in films that cast her as a young woman rather than a precocious child. She had a lead role as a small-town beauty contestant in the comedy Drop Dead Gorgeous and co-starred with Michelle Williams as one of the teenage girls who unwittingly uncovers the Watergate scandal in the comedy Dick.

In 2007, while struggling with depression, Kirsten entered a facility in Utah. In 2008, she admitted she regretted having been a child actress, saying: "I have had to grow up very fast in the adult world of acting. I already know that if I have a child, I will never put them through this."